


The Sun Turned Cold and Still

by Vitreous_Humor



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Gen, Gore, Hell, M/M, Mind Invasion, Violence, group chats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 06:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20385214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: “Oh, angel...”“Not anymore, I think.”***Aziraphale falls, and Crowley runs to catch him.





	The Sun Turned Cold and Still

Of course there was a Hell group chat.

_Of course _there was. It was mostly full of badly-cropped genitals, misplaced comments of a personal nature and endless, endless strings of emojis that had likely become their own infernal dialect by now. Crowley knew the group chat well; he was the one who had set it up sometime back in 2006. He would have gotten a commendation for it, too, if Hastur hadn't almost immediately posted a picture of something that was either a penis or a mushroom, resulting in a fight that left a half-dozen casualties and no clear consensus either way.

Despite the business last year, Crowley was still on the group chat, likely because no one knew how to boot him off. Sometimes he even checked in to see how everyone's genitals were doing and to see if Dagon had ever gotten that weird rash cleared up after their encounter with that shoggoth (badly, and no).

It wasn't like he checked in often however, and of course he had it muted. That was why it was such a shock to be awakened from a deserved Saturday afternoon nap by the signature sound of a car crash alerting him that he had a message. Without thinking about it, he fumbled for the phone and found a brand new participant had announced his presence with a single message.

**Gabriel: Your problem now, assholes.**

Crowley puzzled over the message for a few moments, and then he went utterly numb with terror. His stomach felt as if it had been filled with stones, and now he was sinking under the weight of it. Even as his mind tried to find other things it could be, other explanations, he snapped his fingers twice. The first snap put him in his clothes. The second took him straight to a Soho bookshop which was still standing and exactly as it should have been except for the smoking crater at the center of the floor.

For a moment, he was utterly still, reaching out for the presence of the angel that had inhabited the bookshop for two hundred years, the Earth for six thousand. Gone, all gone, that _angel_ was gone, and Crowley's fear was so intense he couldn't even convert it to rage.

In that moment, he only knew one thing: he had to find Aziraphale before the demons found him, and that meant...

He took a deep breath, told himself he had done stupider things, knew it wasn't true... and jumped straight into the crater.

***

Crowley lasted less than an hour in Hell. He made it through two corridors and one security checkpoint before some pissant little goat demon recognized him from his old Employee of the Month poster, and then it was all over.

One moment he was doing an excellent imitation of someone you probably shouldn't mess with, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground and getting the shit kicked out of him.

He didn't do too badly; at the very least, there were some demons who were going to be limping home that night minus some skin and some fingers, but he had never been a fighter.

“You great fucking idiots!” he roared as they finally pulled him up to his feet. “Do you have any clue-”

“Do you?”

Crowley was dragged around to face Hastur.

Hastur slouched over Crowley, peering down into his face with with a bleak and empty gaze. Crowley could see the maggots wiggling at the corners of his eyes, trying to escape his mouth, and he bared his teeth.

“You want to let me go,” Crowley tried. “You don't know what you're dealing with...”

“Oh I know what I'm dealing with, snake,” Hastur said calmly, closing his long fingers around Crowley's throat. “I'm dealing with a demon who hasn't got any holy water on him. I'm dealing with the traitor...”

He started to lift and to squeeze, and Crowley clawed at his hand, hissing helplessly as his feet left the floor. He didn't need to breathe, but his body forgot that all the time. He struggled, going lightheaded, blackness edging his vision, and all he could think was _Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale..._

When Hastur finally let him go, dropping him back into the rough arms of the waiting demon horde, Crowley realized the duke was still talking.

“-keep you for a few dozen years, and then we'll let you see your little boyfriend. What he won't look like then, broken to bits, precious little angel that he used to be. We're going to give him to the tempters first, you know, your lot. Lots of good memories there, I bet...”

Crowley started to laugh, blood splattering on his shirt. They had cracked a fang, and the rough edge sliced his lip clean open. Satan, he _hurt _but it was so funny.

“You think...” he managed. “You really think...”

Hastur looked at him, and Crowley thought he saw the beginning of apprehension in the other demon's fathomless black eyes.

“What?” asked Hastur, but then a dense and terrible buzzing filled the air.

“Demon Crowley.”

That voice cleared the hall, demons scattering to any place they could get to, because if that voice wasn't addressing you, you did _not _want to be around. A moment later, the hallway was empty except for Hastur, Crowley, and the demon prince walking towards them.

Crowley wavered on his feet, but he somehow managed to dip into a bow that didn't leave him on the floor. He was vaguely aware that Hastur had used his own obeisance to slip further behind Crowley.

“Lord Beelzebub,” he said. “What an honor.”

“It isn't.” ze said briskly. “Come with me.”

Without a glance back at Hastur, Crowley fell into step with Beelzebub, taking care to keep his steps a little shorter than zirs. He could feel eyes on him, peering from cracked doors and dark ceiling crevices, and he resisted the urge to flip them off. Fuck, but he ached.

“You knew,” Beelzebub said, making Crowley flinch. There wasn't any anger in Beelzebub's voice, but there seldom was. You didn't need to be angry to split someone into a dozen parts while they were still screaming or to command your flies to devour someone alive, after all.

“I guessed, my lord,” Crowley said warily. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough I didn't tear your head from your body and spike it on my throne.”

“What an honor,” Crowley repeated, and he followed zir deeper into hell.

***

They had blocked off the entire sector where Aziraphale had crashed after his fall. The doors were blocked with makeshift barricades, and Beelzebub waved away the two demons who had been nervously guarding it.

Beelzebub cleared the rubble with a snap of zir fingers, and Crowley took a deep breath.

“Remember,” he said, and Beelzebub gave him an unimpressed look.

“Last longer than five minutes first. No one else has.”

The door closed after him with a clang, and Crowley stepped gingerly around the body belonging to the demon right behind the last one out. He made himself look at it, and then quickly wished he hadn't.

_Oh, it looks like he was having fun, _Crowley thought, sickened.

Despite everything, he found that it was easy to walk through the corridors. No matter who was lying crumpled in the corners or what was dripping down from the walls, he was there for one reason, for one _person, _and that was all that mattered. It was all that had mattered for thousands of years.

He rounded a corner, and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“Oh, angel...”

“Not anymore, I think.”

Aziraphale stood a half-dozen feet away, and he didn't look so very different. Same sturdy build, same mild expression. His pale hair looked coarse, like sheep's wool, and a pair of neatly curled horns rose from his head..

And the blood. The blood was new.

Aziraphale's hands were dark with it, and it spilled down his chin and the front of his shirt as if he had been eating a bucket of ganache without a spoon. He looked at Crowley calmly, and Crowley made himself take a step closer.

“You're a mess,” he said, and Aziraphale shook his head dolefully.

“It's certainly not my fault. They kept grabbing at me and saying such horrible things. Crowley, you must believe me; I tried to be _reasonable_, but...”

He shrugged, as if it were a great shame.

“But there was nothing to be done?” Crowley suggested, and Aziraphale beamed at him.

“Oh, you do understand. Really. Such a silly fuss, and- oh but my dear, look at _you_. You're hurt.”

Crowley couldn't stop himself from flinching when Aziraphale reached bloodied hands for his face, but Aziraphale didn't seem to notice. His touch was as light and gentle as it always was, turning Crowley's face this way and that as he clucked in disapproval.

“What unpleasantness,” he said fussily. “No wonder no one likes it here.”

Crowley choked back a laugh.

“Well, you could certainly say that,” he began, and Aziraphale snapped his fingers.

Crowley stumbled a little, the relief from pain blisteringly cold for a moment. When he reached up, his teeth were fine and all of the cuts and contusions had disappeared.

“Demons can't heal like that,” he said numbly.

Aziraphale shrugged.

“Angels can.”

He started to say something else, but then he stared at Crowley, a strange expression in his eyes.

“Oh, my dear,” he said, his voice hushed.

“What? What is it?”

“All these years, I knew what love felt like...”

Crowley winced, reaching over to take Aziraphale's hand.

“It's all right,” he said. “It is. It's still right there, even if you can't feel it. I promise you, it's all still right there, just for you...”

Aziraphale shook his head.

“Oh I'm sure it is. But it's always been more than just _love, _hasn't it? Oh goodness, let me see...”

Crowley threaded sneakily through his targets' minds, nothing more than a whisper of scales and a comforting word to ease his passing. This was... this was like getting body slammed by a polar bear.

“Aziraphale...”

“Oh... you're so _interested_ in me, you always want to know what I'm doing. You know that all you have to do is ask, my dear. I'll always tell you what I'm doing even if- Ha, you also find me insufferably tedious and pedantic sometimes. Goodness, how annoyed with me you can be...”

Aziraphale chortled, and he pressed a little closer, his eyes unfocused. Crowley's knees buckled, and he had to cling to Aziraphale's shoulder to steady himself.

“And you're jealous, oh you are so _jealous _of me. Will that go away now that I'm fallen? I can't tell, but it's still there. And oh yes, lust. So much lust, very flattering of course, and I never knew. What fools angels are...”

“Angel, please...”

“Oh. And you're afraid of me.”

Crowley gasped as the pressure let up, stumbling back against the wall. He expected to see contrition on Aziraphale's face, and he hurried to comfort him, but again he had guessed wrong. Aziraphale looked at him with an expression that could only be called coquettish.

“I would never, ever hurt you,” Aziraphale murmured. “But perhaps I like that you are a little worried I might.”

_Never knew before that terror converts one for one to turned on. Learn something new every day, _Crowley thought.

“We can talk more about this at home,” he said. “Wouldn't it be nice to go home, wash up? You're probably starving, and Hell doesn't have any good cake.”

“Oh, that does sound rather nice,” Aziraphale said, pleased. “Do we need to speak to anyone before we go? I've left a mess.”

Crowley choked on a laugh.

“Actually no. So long as I keep you out of Hell, no one's going to bother us anymore.”

“And Heaven isn't going to want to come looking for a pair of demons any time soon. How nice for us. We'll be left alone.”

“If they know what's good for them,” Crowley said, and he told himself that he needed to stop admiring the slightly bloody edge that Aziraphale's words had acquired.

It was, Crowley reflected, a recipe for disaster. Take one principality, already made for weapons and war, add six thousand years of human love and human cruelty, and send him down to a place where he liked nothing more than he liked his own convenience and his own comfort. Gabriel had better be damned sure he locked the gates to Heaven at night.

Crowley stood away from the wall, wobbly on his feet, but steady enough to take Aziraphale's hand.

“C'mon, angel. Let's go home.”

Aziraphale looked at him curiously.

“That's the third time you've called me that. Don't you think you ought to stop?”

Crowley shook his head.

“No. You're not Heaven's angel anymore, but you're still mine.”

Aziraphale smiled at him fondly, and Crowley's vision blurred. Aziraphale was permanently changed. He was just the same. It didn't matter, and it never had.

“Romantic,” Aziraphale said.

He snapped his fingers, and they were gone.

**Author's Note:**

> *Everyone's having so much much fun with a Demon!Aziraphale, I thought I'd give it a try too.
> 
> *Okay, so my headcanon is that with two little words, “demons can,” Aziraphale immediately became the most dangerous thing in Heaven. It feels like a nifty little mirror image of Crowley's imagination, where suddenly the impossible becomes possible just with a shift in how you think. Heaven's finest seem to me to be notoriously bad at changing their minds, so this must have been horrifying.
> 
> *I have a theory that all falling does is make you wonder why you were playing by Heaven's rules in the first place.
> 
> *To reiterate, I'm from the Hannibal fandom. I know it doesn't excuse anything, but it explains some things.
> 
> *I really wanted to title this "Angels Gone Wild."
> 
> *Relevant quote from another Neil Gaiman work,_ Neverwhere_: “When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else.”


End file.
